


First Sight

by Saucery



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: A Very Long Non-Engagement, Alternate Universe - Canon, Character Study, Creepy, Dubious Consent, Family, I'll Wait Until You're Legal, Implied Future Courtship, Implied Future Non-Con/Dub-Con, Imprinting, Internal Monologue, Love, Love at First Sight, M/M, Mating, Minor Canonical Character(s), Moral Ambiguity, Non-Explicit, Obsession, Pack Dynamics, Poetic, Possessive Behavior, Protectiveness, Quiet, Secret Admirer, Secrets, Self-Control, Self-Discipline, Sexual Fantasy, Stalking, Supernatural Elements, Teenagers, Underage Character, Voyeurism, Werewolves
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-09-03
Updated: 2012-09-03
Packaged: 2017-11-13 12:12:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,310
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/503427
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Saucery/pseuds/Saucery
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Derek is either a die-hard romantic or a first-class creep. You decide.</p>
            </blockquote>





	First Sight

**Author's Note:**

  * For [colethewolf](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=colethewolf).



* * *

 

Derek caught a scent while on morning patrol - just a hint of a thing, a golden flutter of a thing, the sort of scent that Gemma would, inevitably, call a 'Snitch'. (He had to stop reading her  _Harry Potter_  at bedtime. Eventually.)

The perimeter around the Hale house was kept secure, at all hours, by Josh or Uncle Peter or Mom or Dad or by Derek himself. Whoever was on shift. Laura was lucky to be studying in New York, absolved of this tedious duty.

This was the first time in months that Derek had caught a scent.

So, naturally, he followed it.

Quietly. Steadily. Swift upon the ground but also light upon it, stirring not a leaf if he could help it, more silent than a whisper or than an autumn breeze.

As he drew closer, the scent warmed, as bare skin was warmed by sleep or passion. It gained dimensions as he reached it, a brightness and a lift, a hummingbird restlessness, there and gone again. Still, he followed it. It had a shape, now. An echo of a shape. A definite sense of eagerness and abandonment, of  _boyhood_.

Oh. It was a boy.

Gold-lit in the early morning sun, silhouetted against the trees, laughing. At something. On his - on his phone. There were tracks in the mud, all the way out of the clearing, leading toward the main road.

The boy was slender and young - younger than Derek, certainly, by around five years. Thirteen. Perhaps fourteen. A sudden, easy sprawl of limbs upon the grass, heedless of stains. A careless freedom, an unselfconscious awkwardness, right knee hitched up and leaning to one side, shirt rucked up, baring a strip of stomach.

And the boy laughed, and talked, and laughed.

He never stopped talking.

Who was he talking to?

And why here?

Was it simply a newly-discovered favorite spot? A... a hideaway?

From what? The boy didn't seem to have anything to hide from. Or anything _to_ hide. From anyone. His scent was open and honest, if bruised in places, like a flower was, when someone was rough with it, and its soft, pale petals darkened.

And yet, Derek could not smell injury on him.

Not physical injury, at any rate. And nothing that went with this continuous chatter, this continuous laughter. A glittering, constant cascade of sound. Shielding something. Shielding -

Maybe he  _did_  have something to hide.

But what? He wasn't a Hunter's son, and not only because there wasn't a trace of wolfsbane or gunpowder upon him. No, he wasn't a Hunter because Derek had studied his father's files on every known Hunter and Hunter's heir from here to the West Coast, indexed by family and origin and weapon of choice. This boy's face was not in those files. He'd have remembered it. It was a distinctive face, after all, lush-mouthed and pretty, in an oddly plain sort of way, with with moles dotting that naked throat.

This boy was no Hunter. He resembled prey, instead. Unknowing. Vulnerable. The pulse beating at his neck and at his wrists was audible to Derek, even from this distance. It grew louder the longer Derek listened to it, the beat of a quiet drum. A summons, a song.

The voice on the other end of the line called him Stiles. Styles? No. Stiles.

A male voice. A... friendly voice. Not roughened with want. A voice belonging to someone named Scott. Someone who played lacrosse. And, by Stiles's teasing estimation, not very well.

Human. The boy was human. Only human.

If Josh caught him -

Josh was not kind.

Finally, the boy (Stiles, his name was Stiles) left, hitching his schoolbag over his shoulder, heedless of having been watched, all the while - and the rumbling of a passing car snapped Derek back to reality, startled him into wakefulness, as if he'd been asleep.

As if he'd been -

No. It hadn't been a dream.

That Snitch of a scent still lingered, slowly washed away by tides of wind, as patterns in the sand were washed away by the sea.

Derek's claws were out. He blinked at them, surprised, and at the damp patches on his jeans, from where he'd been kneeling among the dew-wet, fallen leaves. His breath was heavy in his lungs. His mouth was dry.

He swallowed, retracted his fangs, and went home.

Showered. Scrubbed the scent from himself, as thoroughly as he could - both the boy's scent, and his own, in reaction to it.

And asked his father, when they all gathered for breakfast, if it was possible for him to have the dawn shifts from now on, please. Yes, even though they were earlier than he normally liked. He was thinking of taking up morning runs, and keeping the evenings for studying. That was all. The deadlines for college applications were drawing near.

If the Alpha was startled, he gave no sign. Then again, Derek's father was rarely startled by anything.

And Derek wasn't, strictly, lying. He  _did_  think those were all great ideas.

Especially now that he'd seen Stiles.

Uncle Peter spared him a curious glance - and Uncle Peter's curiosity was both tenacious and dangerous - but Derek gave no sign of being perturbed. He wasn't. He was certain. For the first time in his life, he was  _certain_. A mate was a mate. A mate, once found, must be claimed.

Gemma told him he looked funny. Derek stuck a finger in her wild brown curls. She grabbed it and worried at it with her baby fangs, more gums than teeth.

Derek's mother said not to encourage her. Josh snorted. Gemma stuck out her tongue.

It was a good thing Laura wasn't here, or Laura would've figured him out. Immediately.

Everything went back to normal.

Everything, that is, except Derek's morning routine.

And the fact he spent most mornings crouching at the edges of a particular clearing, first waiting, then watching, then methodically erasing every single one of the boy's tracks, or covering those that could not be erased.

It became a habit. A daily meditation.

On the one hand, he was calmer than ever.

On the other, he was also more... on edge.

More aware, anyway. His senses were sharper. Keener. At school (and he had only two months left of it) he'd catch that scent, sometimes, and follow it, beneath the meaningless buzz of other voices, the squeaking of sneakers on dirty floors, the cacophony of sight and sound and smell that was the daylight world.

He wondered what Stiles would smell like, under the moon, pressed to the grass.

If he would smell sweeter, saltier, hotter.

If he would run.

(Or try to.)

Derek didn't approach Stiles. Didn't say anything. There was no point. The boy was too young, still, not yet old enough to mate. And there wasn't enough time, before Derek's next heat, to prime Stiles. Prepare him. Bite him. Turn him.

No, it was back to the basement for Derek. For at least the next few years. Back to the cage, to weather out his heat. He'd take leave from his college, before every full moon, and make sure he was home in time.

Ultimately, his pack would find out about Stiles. With Derek not here for morning patrols, they would. So Derek planned to frighten Stiles away, just before leaving - to turn up one day and loom threateningly and say something about private property, something suitably forbidding, involving fines and legal prosecutions and all manner of unpleasant things.

The boy would not return to the forest.

Not until Derek returned from college, four years hence, and  _brought_  Stiles here. For his claiming.

"Well, you've got everything figured out," said his mother, pleased, when Derek told her which courses he was applying to, and why. He was always the decisive one. The deliberate one.

"Yes," Derek replied, and smiled. "I have."

 

* * *

**fin.**

**Author's Note:**

> Like my writing? Check out [my blog](http://saucefactory.tumblr.com/)!


End file.
